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Home > Silent Snow, Secret Snow


"Silent Snow, Secret Snow" ( 1934) is Conrad Aiken's best known short story.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

It tells of a boy who, more and more, comes to inhabit a dream-world filled with snow, that he finds preferable to the world inhabited by his school, his classes, and his parents. Taken literally it is a psychological tale of incipient madness and psychosis. Some read deeper meaning into it, however, taking it as a Symbolist tale of escape from, and rejection of, reality.

The story was dramatized as an episode of Night Gallery, with voice-over narration from the story read by Orson Welles.



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